The present invention relates to wire clamp assemblies and in particular, to a wire and sleeve assembly for securing together portions of a fractured bone to facilitate healing.
It is routine surgical practice to bind portions of a fractured bone together to ensure their proper alignment and to facilitate the knitting together of the bone portions. Wire and clamp assemblies are typically used for this purpose. Such assemblies can be subjected to very high tensile forces when, for example, the fractured bone is subjected to a high bending moment.
It is therefore important that the wire and clamp assembly embody the highest possible resistance to tensile forces which may cause such failures.
Known wire and clamp assemblies, as exemplified in FIG. 1, include a stranded, stainless steel cable and a sleeve having a pair of bores to receive the ends of the cable. Each cable end is clamped in one bore by urging the outer wall of the bore against the cable, squeezing the cable between the outer wall of the bore and the solid central portion of the sleeve. While such wire and clamp assemblies perform satisfactorily in most cases, they sometimes fail under high bending forces exerted on the fractured bone as described above. Moreover, the stranded stainless steel wire used in such assemblies is relatively expensive. A need therefore remains for a stronger, less expensive wire and clamp assembly for binding fractured bones.